It was the kind of inning that gives six-run innings a bad name.
That’s right, the dreaded seven-run inning.
The Tigers hit the Indians upside the head with one of those at Progressive Field on June 22, and that was basically game, set and match as the Tribe got walloped 10-4, getting swept by the Tigers in the three-game series.
“That seven-spot took the game out of our hands,” said Tribe manager Terry Francona, whose team spent three days in the dunk tank, over the weekend, compliments of the streaking Tigers, who have won four in a row to move back into first place in the Central Division. The Indians are in third place, five games behind Detroit.
The Tigers, who from May 19 to June 19 went 9-20, have pulled out of that nose dive by winning four in a row, the last three in Cleveland.
Tribe pitcher Josh Tomlin, who was taken to the woodshed by the Tigers, said he isn’t ready to concede anything.
“They are a good team. We’re capable of beating them, but we didn’t in this series. That’s baseball,” he said. “But we can compete with those guys. We just didn’t play our best baseball in this series.”
Especially in the fifth inning June 22, when the Tigers, already leading 2-0, sent 12 men to the plate against three Indians pitchers. The first six Tigers to bat in the inning all reached base and scored. The big blows were back-to-back two-run doubles by J.D. Martinez and Nick Castellanos.
The inning also included two of the three errors made by the Indians’ bumbling defense, which meant that four of the seven runs in the inning were unearned.
To his credit, Tomlin, who gave up the back-to-back doubles after one of the errors, refused to use the errors as an excuse for his ugly outing.
“That inning is on me. I didn’t do enough to limit the damage. I’ve got to make better pitches,” he said.
Tomlin needed 34 pitches to get through the first inning, even though he only allowed one run — an opposite-field home run over the right-field wall by Miguel Cabrera, who battled Tomlin to a 3-2 count and then lowered the boom.
“I threw everything but the kitchen sink to him in that at-bat,” Tomlin said. “The home run came on a cutter away that I thought was a good pitch. But he’s a good hitter and he hit a good pitch.”
Tomlin only lasted four innings, giving up eight runs (five earned) on eight hits, with five strikeouts and two walks.
“He threw a lot of pitches in the first inning, and the middle of their order is so tough, they really made him work,” said Francona.
Tomlin is 4-5 overall. But in his last three starts, he’s 0-3 with a 7.80 ERA.
Tigers starter Max Scherzer, who gave up 10 runs in four innings to Kansas City in his last start, breezed through six innings, holding the Indians to one run on six hits. He struck out eight and walked two.
“We got him into some deep counts, but he always seemed to be able to make a big pitch when he had to,” said Francona.
The Indians, who were losing, 9-0, after the top of the fifth inning, got most of their offense from Michael Brantley, who was 3-for-5 with two doubles and three RBI.
One of Brantley’s hits was a two-run double in the Indians’ three-run ninth inning that did nothing but turn a really bad, 10-1 blowout into your basic run-of-the-mill, 10-4 blowout.